


Vengeance

by DG_Fletcher



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Heroism, Kickass Cardassian, M/M, Revenge, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-10 15:51:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5592175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DG_Fletcher/pseuds/DG_Fletcher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bashir is captured and tortured by an old schoolmate, Garak wreaks his revenge. </p><p>A rewrite of https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10067209/7/Julian-Bashir-Must-Suffer%20by by GeorgieGinger  </p><p>Claire belongs to GeorgieGinger, Claire's motives belong to GeorgieGinger, I just wanted Garak get more than 1 line of revenge at the end. ^_^</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vengeance

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Julian Must Suffer, Chapter 07](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/165559) by GeorgieGinger. 



"Ah, so you're awake then," The woman's voice pushed its way through a haze of drugs in Bashir's mind--it felt like Rohypnol. Roofies!--and echoed off walls that clearly reflected a small room made of mostly glass. "Good."

He tried to turn his head to pinpoint the sound and couldn't. His legs, arms, head, pelvis, were all firmly immobilized by surgical clamping devices, to the point where the only part of his body that could move was his chest to breathe. 

He tried to speak and tasted a the bitter flavor of sterile sponge jammed into his mouth, tried to open his eyes, seeing nothing and feeling the rims of eye coverings pressing against the bones. 

Numb and dizzy through the rohypnol, Bashir tried to reason his way through this situation. What could have happened that would justify this? Nothing felt broken--but he was possibly under heavy medication for pain and unaware. There was a reason for this, there had to be. 

Then why did her the edge in her voice send his adrenaline and cortisol levels spiking?

The clip of old fashioned women's heels approached, getting louder and louder, clicking on tile floors and echoing off the glass walls. Her gloved hand pressed against the sides of his face as she removed the eye coverings and he his temple throbbed as he tried to turn away from the blasting bright light behind her head. He slammed his eyes shut, the surgical lamp bright enough that he saw the reds and yellows of light passing through the flesh of his eyelids. 

The lamp squeaked and the light flicked out through his eyelids. He felt her place her cold, gloved hand on his chest. "Come on, open your eyes Doctor," It wasn't just some "edge". That was genuine mockery in her voice. 

He pried open his eyes and what had been a silhouette burned into his retinas congealed into a blond woman about his own age, likely human, leaning in close enough he could smell what she'd had for lunch on her breath. The glint in her eyes, the way she pressed her fingertips against his chest, the nonprofessional clothing--he was terrified. This wasn't a medical facility. It was a torture facility!

"There we are," she said, the edges of her eyes crinkling up in glee at him. "Now, do you know where you are?" 

Did she expect an answer or was she just enjoying watching him gnaw surgical sponge? He flicked his eyes--the only thing he could move--down toward his mouth and back up at her. "Ah," she said, and pulled the sponge out with her fingertips. "Do you know where you are?" she repeated. 

He tried to speak and everything stung, from the roof of his mouth all the way down to his chest. He tried to cough and doing so while bound down sent spasms through his body, the ordinary kickback of the diaphragm having nowhere to go. 

Her face twisted up in what he very much hoped wasn't -glee- and she ran her hand down his entire prone body, walking out of his field of vision. "I'm not surprised if your throat hurts, Doctor." He felt her fingertips running down his leg, foot, and off his big toe. "Jipli root does tend to make the throat sore," 

Jipli root. 

A mildly poisonous root from Bajor that when cooked with vinegar, converted to rohypnol, thorohydrazine, and about half a dozen other toxins. 

There was no way she was doing this for his medical health. Thorohydrazine alone was enough to cause adrenal problems, acute sensory hypersensitivity, and permanent muscle and neural scarring. 

This was going to be bad. 

Very bad. 

"What do you want with me?!" he cried, half choking on the swollen, raw flesh that was the back of his throat. 

She appeared in his face again, close enough that he could breathe nothing but the smell of ham sandwich. She ran the tips of her gloved fingers up the side of his face--then slapped him hard enough to bruise. 

"Oh, you don't understand, do you?" she mocked. 

It occurred to him he might be happier -not- understanding. 

She jammed the bitter, antiseptic sponge back into his mouth. "Poor, poor doctor," she said, then vanished from his field of vision, the sound of her humming and rummaging through things clinking and bouncing off the walls to where he couldn't figure out where she was. 

"You're here because I am a scientist and I need a guinea pig for my latest research," 

She appeared with a small, disk shaped device in her hand. It looked like it was likely made of surgical plastic, with green alert lights on the top and reusable skin attach pads on the bottom. "I want to see how much your -genetically enhanced- brain can take before it cracks under pressure." She held it up to his face and ran the edge of the device against his upper lip, presumably so he could feel what the device was like before she turned it on. 

The little green alert lights flickered and glinted in her face and every ounce of advice the Academy gave about how to handle torture scenarios vanished from his mind. Terror-sweat poured from him, whisked into the dry laboratory air, and now he trembled of cold and fear both. She would torture him. She would kill him. She would torture him in a way designed to wreak havok on him personally, and it would be the last thing he ever knew. 

And judging by the gleam in her eyes, she would enjoy every minute of it.

She ran the device across her own upper lip and smirked. "Why are you so scared, Doctor?" she asked. "I thought your enhancements made you less susceptible to pain than ordinary humans."

She slammed the device down on his chest and everything went to hell. 

He writhing against the surgical clamping devices so hard he popped the wrist bones out of place in his left arm. Searing tendrils of crackling electrical current twisted their way through bare, freezing flesh and wrapped around his ribs all the way to his spine, leaving what should be horrific third degree electrical burns in their wake. Every breath was a war of his cells screaming for oxygen fighting his nerves screaming for his torso not to press against the flames. Through the wrenching agony and system shock, he was baffled it didn't act as a defibrillator and disrupt the wild pounding in his ears. 

And just as suddenly as it was there, it was gone, leaving nothing but the acute cry for attention in his left wrist and the waves of shock and ache of over-strained muscles in his chest. He lay there gasping for air, ice cold from shock, unsuccessfully trying to move his arm to pop his wrist back into place.

"Oh, stop being such a baby, Julian!" she tutted. 

At the edge of his vision, tugging the ocular muscles, he could see her standing against a metal equipment table, one hand on her hip, and a white remote control in the other. 

"You still don't recognize me, do you? That makes me incredibly... upset." Her thumb twitched on the remote and it began again, new tendrils of electric fire crisscrossing over the old tendrils, wrapping and burning and choking--and at some point, it would get bad enough it would kill him. 

She was talking through his torture, furious at him over something from Starfleet Medical School that he doubted he'd remember on a good day, but whatever it was, she was angry enough to ram her fist into his gut at one point, sending phlegm and stomach acid up into his mouth, unswallowable because of the sponge. He choked and gagged, half terrified and half hoping he would vomit and drown in it, death to escape the trauma.

For better or for worse, she saw what was happening and yanked the sponge out. He lay there screaming through raw, Jibril-root scratched vocal cords, writhing and sobbing, every precious breath scraping through him as the endorphins of a body wracked beyond hell poured through him and everything numbed, sharpened, numbed. His wrist, still out of place, went through waves of being the most painful thing in the world to being nonexistent in a sea of overworked pain receptors. 

School. It had something to do with school. He could hear her furious with him, utterly furious, but the words didn't conjeal in his head against the rohypnol, thorohydrazine, and natural trauma-induced endorphins--and the sound of his own screams and heart throbbing in his ears. 

Finally she turned it off, and he heard the end of a tirade "--a Doctor who was genetically engineered. Who had CHEATED his way through life, while I had to suffer!" She slammed her fist into the doorframe, the only part of the room not glass. 

She spun on her heels and stormed toward him, yanking it off and plugging it into a wall. 

She hadn't shut it off. It had run out of charge!

He had only minutes, through the severe muscle cramping, burns, and pain-wracked wrist to get through to her. Now that he could breathe and think more clearly--what had she said about school. Something about being fourth instead of third. 

"Claire?" he asked. 

He'd guessed right--and now she was even more angry. 

She stormed toward him. 

\---------

Garak had "Lighthouse", an old Cardassian classic that would hopefully win Bashir over this time. Bashir hadn't liked "The Never Ending Sacrifice" because it showed selfless obedience to Cardassia, and they did it "over and over again", and he hadn't liked Enigma Tales because everyone was always guilty.

"Lighthouse" skirted most of the "over and over again" by being from the perspective of the lighthouse itself, skirted "everyone is always guilty" by making the villain nothing but the weather, and skirted the "selfless" part of the sacrifice to Cardassia by having the Cardassian Navy keep the lighthouse's occupants from drowning. Being rescued from certain death could hardly be called "selfless".

Given, it was a book intended for teenagers, but some things couldn't be helped. Acquiring it took some considerable doing--and now Bashir was late. Very, very late. 

Garak checked his schedule. He had an appointment with repairing Morn's pants in an hour. Not to seem out of place, he thought of an errand and walked past the med bay to see if Bashir were stuck in surgery. 

Nurse Galati was coming the other way. 

"You're Garak, right?" the nurse said.

"I am Garak, yes," 

"Have you seen Dr Bashir?" the nurse asked. "I can't find him anywhere and he seems to have misplaced or turned off his comlink."

"He was supposed to be at lunch with me and never showed up," 

The nurse tried again and when he hit the com, it made a slight white-noise sound that caught Garak's attention. If Bashir's com were truly off, there should be nothing but the overtones of the beep sound, but the white noise meant the system was connecting and no one was responding back. 

"May I use this?" he asked Nurse Galati, pointing to the computer on the wall.

The Nurse nodded. 

Garak input a code into the computer that would triangulate where the signal could be found, and it led him to Cargo Bay 17, with three other people wearing com badges in the room. He tested one, an Ensign Poole.

"Ensign, sorry to disturb you, is Dr Bashir there with you?" he asked. 

The confused Ensign responded, "No sir, just me and Shen and Nkrumah." 

The computer said otherwise. Shen and Nkrumah were indeed there, but Bashir's badge was clearly in the same room.

The old familiar tendrils of paranoia that had been standard fare in his former career started to flicker in the back of his mind and he shoved them back down. It was the Federation. Everything was likely spick and span as usual, too usual, it sort of got on his nerves, there was no flexibility with any of it. 

Just beaming himself down there would be -awkward- and most situations would make it uncalled for. Beaming the Nurse, however, would make perfect sense. Best case scenario, Bashir was behind some kind of wall, up to something or other, and Poole couldn't see him. Worse case scenario, he'd sent the Nurse and he still had the computer under the Nurse's login. 

"Nurse Galati, I'll send you to check on them." he hit the button and teleported him to the cargo bay, then walked them through getting to where the com badge was. 

Nurse Galati's voice came through the com link, and Garak's paranoia came flooding back. 

"It's the com badge and his clothes in a crate," 

Garak cracked his knuckles used the Nurse's login to pull up a bunch of the data on the ship.

If Bashir's clothes were in a crate, where was Bashir? 

Garak stifled a smile at his Best Case Scenario: Bashir always accusing Garak of being a spy because -Bashir- was a spy, and now the spy mission was over and he'd ditched the clothes here as to not be tracked.

Worst Case Scenario was that someone had kidnapped Bashir and taken him off the ship. It had always felt it was just paranoia talking when he compiled a list of people he considered Bashir's enemies, but now he thanked his paranoia and thumbed through the list on a data pad with one hand and tracked each of their locations using Nurse Galati's log in on the other. 

Number 8 on a list of 17 came up as a Dr Claire, and she arrived on the ship earlier that day. 

"Computer, locate Dr Claire." 

"Dr Claire is in Residential Deck #3, room #16."

Garak beamed directly there under Nurse Galati's authorization, armed with a knife and already mulling over exactly what he'd say to Odo if Odo caught him there if worst case scenario turned out to be false. 

The room was empty. He sifted through her baggage as quickly as possible. What was there meant little--what wasn't meant a lot. There was a luggage manifest, and it listed a surgical holding table, which was nowhere to be seen, and multiple surgical equipment devices that were also missing. 

His Worst Case Scenario just got a LOT worse. 

He hit the com for Odo. 

"Security, we have an emergency situation and I need to you to devote whatever resources you have at your disposal to finding Dr Bashir. NOW." 

"What?" Odo's voice cracked. "Why?"

"I have reason to believe he's in great danger." he rattled off all the facts he had. The com badge and the clothes in the crate. Dr Claire. The missing surgical equpiment. "Check back with me the instant you get something on him," he said. 

Odo clicked out and he went to the computer. He had Claire's permissions, which amounted to next to nothing. His own "official" login meant nothing as well. He pulled out one of the seven "lockpick" logins he'd saved up and jammed it in. 

He checked transports, looking for Claire or Bashir or any unlabeled transports. Nothing. 

He checked shuttles and ship manifests. Still nothing--although that didn't completely rule it out, it made it a bit more likely they were still on the ship. 

How to find them?

Odo was "working on it", whatever that meant. If he'd -been- Odo, he would have shifted into a Cardassian Hunt Hound and checked by scent. With the teleportations all tracked, wherever they were had been on foot. 

On foot. 

He didn't have clearance for the security cameras on any of his logins. That was on a separate network. 

But he knew they were on foot. 

He pulled up a map of the ship and sifted through where -he'd- put a secret surgical center somewhere within quick, discreet walking distance between these quarters and where Bashir had been 2 hours ago, either the med bay or his own quarters. 

He beamed to Cargo Bay 8 and startled the hell out of a couple workers, but came up empty handed. 

A red herring! The empty room felt a thousand degrees colder than normal and he backed against the wall, biting down on the back of his hand to keep from cursing, images of what he himself could do with surgical tools like that if given a whole 2 hours to play flicking through his head. 

How had he guessed wrong? 

There were only a few dozen cargo bays or other hideaway locations. This had to be it, didn't it?? He ran his hands along his face, backtracking mentally where he'd gone wrong. 

This wasn't the same cargo bay the com and the clothes had been in. That was on the other side of where Bashir had been--because the equipment had never been in Claire's room. 

He pulled out a phaser and set it to stun. 

"COMPUTER BEAM ME TO CARGO BAY TWENTY SEVEN IMMEDIATELY."

The teleport beam congealed him in a room that was either from his fondest dreams or his worst nightmares depending on whose tools these were and who was on the table. Right now, it was squarely in the realm of "worst nightmare". 

A woman with a Federation Lab Coat and a long blond braid stood with her back to him, between him and the surgical table. The bioreader showed a heart rate racing at a rate that was only a good thing if you were a Cardassian Vole, and the blood pressure too low even for a Catullan in hibernation to handle. 

Garak took two steps and shot the woman point blank in the head with the phaser on stun. She dropped, throwing up a scalpel as she fell that flicked him across the back of his hand, spattering drops of his black blood into the massive mess of red blooded gore that was supposed to be his doctor, and a surgical vacuum yanked it up automatically, running it through the massive mechanized system. 

Cradling his bleeding hand, he stepped back, professionally congratulating and personally detesting her elegant survival system. 

Without the machines he was attached to, Bashir would have been dead hours ago. The whole system was a network of blood bags, biovacuums, and bioreaders, running in and out of his surgically split open torso and chest cavity. Long white cords of electrical burns rippled in his skin, and his breathing was erratic. 

"Garak?" Bashir croaked, wide eyed. 

Oh, and she'd kept him awake through all of this. Again--professionally commendable, personally unforgivable. 

"The next time you skip lunch on me, PICK A METHOD LESS DANGEROUS!" he cried and whacked the com badge, accidentally forgetting she'd slashed the back of his dominant hand and spattering a long trail of black blood across everything. 

"Odo," he said, "On the count of three, I need you to beam everything in a ten foot radius of my com badge directly to the med bay. This is a major medical emergency," 

"Understood."

"One," Garak kicked Claire out of the radius, none too gently, and dashed around the surgical table, shoving the machines as close to the bed as he could. "Two". He double checked to make sure nothing would kill Bashir on transport, then leaned over him, centering the com badge directly over Bashir's raw, visible, wildly beating heart. 

"THREE." 

The second they congealed, Nurse Galati yanked Garak off hard enough to throw him to the ground. Everyone was running around and freaking out and nobody was paying him any attention anyway. 

Still sitting on the ground where Nurse Galati threw him, he could see Bashir's profile, long thin white electrical burn tendrils running from his forehead. Strain lines of screaming too much, too long. Trails of a poorly cleaned up bloody nose. Tear streaks. 

His Bashir. 

His reason for staying sane on this freezing cold, way too bright, way too "happy" ship. He could feel his sanity slipping away with the erratic beep of the man's heart monitor. 

His paranoia had been his ally so far and now it was begging him to check Nurse Galati's credentials. The results made him chew his lip bad enough that bled, too. Galati wasn't a surgeon, he was a nurse--and he lost a man to hypothermia the year prior. Hypothermia! The man couldn't conquer a simple drop in temperature, and that was who now was sterilizing the area for high intensity trauma surgery? 

The best Doctor in the quadrant was BASHIR, and now Bashir was the one who needed a doctor. 

Bajor? Bajor had shitty doctors, more prone to prayer than science. The best they had to offer was rituals and mumbling nothings that amounted to less than nothing. 

Cardassians and humans weren't very close biologically--as the congealing black line on the back of his hand reminded him, but they were better than the doctor from the USS Olympia the Federation was rapid-flighting in. She was Bolian, top ranked, with 3 years on the job and the finest Bolian medical schools. 

He was entrusting the most important person in his universe to a Bolian. 

He was doomed. 

He had to call in a favor from somewhere. Who did he know that was nearby?

Dr Crell Moset. Nope. He was a virologist. Dr Parmak. Nope. Wrong speciality. Dr Kelleter. Nope. He hated Garak.

Actually. 

Kelleter'd be perfect for the job. 

Garak stood up and walked as fast as possible toward Sisko's office, spun around halfway, dashed to the tailor shop and downloaded the info he needed onto a data pad, and then full on ran to his office, throwing the data pad down with Dr Kelleter's professional photograph staring up at him. 

"Who's this?" Sisko snapped. 

"Dr Kelleter." Garak said. "I ran into him in my line of work several years ago, and he's the only person close enough to arrive in time to save Bashir's life," he said, locking eyes with Sisko and not letting up until the other man broke contact and picked up the data pad. 

"Crimes: xenostudies. Misappropriation of funds. Unauthorized acquisition of a nonaligned ship. Collapse of an ethics treaty with the Lurians. Aggravating the Yridian Nation. Dissection. Vivisection."

Sisko slammed the data pad down on the table. "THIS MAN'S GUILTY OF OVER 80 CRIMES AND YOU WANT ME TO BRING HIM -HERE-? WHY?"

Garak stepped around the table and into Sisko's personal space. "This man's crimes are exactly why we need him. That unauthorized acquisition? Kelleter took down a transport ship containing a significant portion of various aliens--including 13 humans--and ran medical tests on them." 

Sisko folded his arms and his nose flared in rage. Garak stood his ground, about twelve inches from Siskso's face. 

"USS Olympia is a Bolian--." he started.

"HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT?!"

Garak ignored him. "She's been on the force for three years, and her background is microbiology. If this were an infection, she'd be perfect for the job" She likely wouldn't, but saying so would make the comparison easier on Sisko. "Dr Kelleter is a TRAUMA surgeon, and the crime he committed were taking people--humans--apart and more importantly, PUTTING THEM BACK TOGETHER."

Actually, Garak thought again bitterly, the best person in transport range who can put Bashir back together is -Bashir-.

Sisko cringed. "I happen to remember Cardassia has a horrible record for cross species medical ethics," he said, wrinkling his whole face up in disgust. He took a deep breath, then huffed and sat back down, moving his hand to the com button to connect to Cardassia. 

"Ah-" Garak said. "Before you hit that," He went back around the desk to face Sisko again, "It wouldn't go as well if he knows I'm involved. Professionally, he's the only person in the Quadrant I'd recommend. Personally, if he knew I was involved, he wouldn't do anything for you out of sheer spite." 

Sisko sneered at him and hit the button anyway. Garak picked up his data pad and stood right outside the door, listening to Sisko and Gul Dukat argue about what sort of barter and trade was required to get Dr Kelleter there. Garak listened until he heard "he should be there within the hour", and then dashed away. 

An alarm went off, informing him it was time to measure Morn for pants. The walls seemed to pinch in tighter around him than they had in years. He'd potentially lost the best thing on this torturous ship in only an hour, and now he was on the other side of the ship from Morn and his goddamn pants. All of that happened in only an hour.

Garak put on the mask of professionalism, apologized, summed up the situation as "medical emergency", asked Morn about his favorite synthol and got him yammering while took the measurements so he wouldn't notice anything was amiss. 

It was frustrating enough he debated on storming in there with a knife, stabbing her a few times, calling it a day, and sitting outside the Med Bay for however many hours it took to get his Bashir back. 

But Cardassians were masters of psychological torture and Garak had been one of the greatest. He could be patient, take this a bit slower, figure it out--and get her to break as she'd broken his Bashir. 

Morn chipperly yakked the entire time while Garak nodded, smiled, and worked out exactly what needed to be done. 

Eight months of meticulous planning and coordinating later, Garak cracked his knuckles across from a starving, desperately thirsty Dr Claire, in a completely barren, gray room with nothing but a gray table, two gray chairs--and a piece of Federation Medical Green felt with three objects on it.

A scalpel. 

A glass of water. 

A small, disk shaped device made of surgical plastic with a green alert light on top and reusable skin attach pads on the bottom. 

Claire backed away in horror at the disk. As much as Garak wanted it to be, it wasn't the same make and model as the one she'd used on Bashir, but it was the next best thing, and some things couldn't be helped. 

She wouldn't leave this room alive, and he wouldn't lay a hand on her or fire any weapons. She would suffer, she would die, he'd have his and Bashir's revenge--and for the love of sanity, he'd have fun doing it, too.

He took the time to just sit back and watch her. She was a fragile, trembling, oddly fatter woman than she had been eight months ago. Her long blond hair was shorter than it had been, cut around her chin instead of a long braid down her back. He hadn't seen her face last time to know if those were recent stress lines or if she'd always looked like that. 

Her eerily normal eyes flicked from the cup of water, to him, over to the surgical plastic device, back at him, back at the cup of water. Normally one for words, he just sat there and watched her, waiting for her to speak first and give him an idea of where exactly he was supposed to be going with this conversation. 

Humans preferred colder temperatures than Cardassians. This room was on the comfortably warm side for him, and she was sweating with the last bit of water left in her. She hadn't eaten, or more accurately, been fed recently, but she didn't know that. One of the parts of his meticulous planning involved removing her from her prison in such a way that everyone thought she was dead, "corpse" still present, a full 3 weeks before he'd taken off from Deep Space Nine. 

No one knew she was alive, let alone still here, and if anyone questioned why he wasn't at the Literary Conference he'd been known to be attending right now, a friendly Lurian on the transport would back up his alibi of a holdover on Nassus III. She'd been in a medical coma for those full three weeks, with the food cut down by exactly the right increment to make her truly feel the hunger. Before the stomach crunches down and masks the hungry feeling, and after the nutrients tapered off. 

She squirmed under his gaze, twisting in the chair, her teeth chattering in the stress, even against the heat. "WHAT DO YOU WAAAAAANT!?" she finally screamed, curling up in a little ball on the chair and tucking her knees up. "Who are you, anyway?!"

Go time. 

"Do you see that little square of felt on the table?" he asked, pointing to it. She bit the back of her knuckle and nodded. 

"Do you recognize the -color- of that felt?"

She shook her head. 

"That shade is Federation Science blue," he said, "Although I've always thought it looks more like turquoise. don't you?" he didn't wait for a response. "I wonder if it reminds you of anyone." He ran his hand over where the tools lay on the felt. "That's just an ordinary scalpel, but this..." he picked up the device. "Do you recognize this?"

This time, he did wait for a response, and what she did was curl up in a little ball, tucking up her knees and covering her face with her hands like she thought it would protect her. 

He continued. "That device is the closest I could find to the things you placed on my good friend's face and chest eight months ago--"

Through her arm, she mumbled something. 

"What was that? I didn't catch that," he said. 

"And groin," she said louder. 

Groin. He hadn't known about that until now. He put the device down and stared at her in a new light. "Oh, so there was a sexual nature to all of this?" he said. "You're very lucky I hadn't known about that before hand. There's a long list of contacts I have who would -love- to ravage you to the brink of madness." 

He put his hands on the table and leaned forward. "Luckily for you," he sneered. "I'm not one of them." 

She blinked. "You're gay?!"

"Sapiosexual, actually."

He stood up and walked around the room. "There are very few things in life worth falling in love with. One's country. One's family. One's nation." he spun on her and got in her space. "But to have someone come in from an entirely different culture, especially one so pedestrian as the Federation, with such a magnificent mind and a flair for words-" he interrupted himself. "Did you know Bashir makes up axioms all on his own? That his favorite word seems to be 'prerogative' and he's the only person I've ever encountered who's been able to use that in a sentence without tripping over it."

He leaned in on her and she backed away so fast she nearly fell off the chair. "And -you- had the gall to put one of those devices up against his skull! If I hadn't been there to put him back together, who knows where we both would have ended up by now. You'd probably have been dead ages ago, knifed in the brig back on Terok Nor." 

Great. He was monologing, and wasn't sure if this counted as a classic Cardassian speech pattern or if he was seriously Villain Style monologuing. 

He forced himself to shut up and sit back in his chair.

"I'm missing a very expensive Literary Conference to share this moment with you," he said. "Your skill as a torture artist was exceptional. I'm somewhat of a torture artist myself, and I thought I'd come here and professionally congratulate you, even if I do personally detest your choice of targets. We Cardassians do prefer a bit more psychological angle on things."

"What are you going to do to me?" Claire asked. 

"-I'm- not going to do anything," Garak said. The last thing on the felt tray was a glass of water. He pointed to it without saying anything and she licked her lips, craving it. 

"I'm going to give you a choice,' he said. He pointed to the device. "You either put that on yourself until you pass out and when you wake, you can have all the water you want, or this room's set to keep you wide awake for 48 hours while I'm away at the conference and we'll have this conversation again when that's over."

He stood up and pushed the chair in, watching her. "I don't mind attending at least one of the days of the conference I'm supposed to be at. I might even get Bashir a signed copy of Shogoth's Enigma Tales," 

"But...!" she cried, too scared to finish the sentence. 

He spread his hands. "It's up to you," he picked up the cup of water and started to turn around, keeping an eye on the little mirror up in the corner in case it occurred to her to grab the scalpel. She fumbled with the grabbed the device and slammed it onto her chest, collapsing in pain, shrieking until she lost consciousness. 

So began the next several days, with him making the room too hot for her, too cold for the both of them when he wasn't in there. He dropped hints in the conversation, ran a subliminal audio file, and flashed subliminal visuals the entire time she was there, warping her mind until she slashed herself across her own stomach, her world's "seppaku" and the closest Garak could get to what she'd done to Bashir. 

"It's the litle things that matter," Garak said over her red puddle of a corpse. He was still (mostly) trapped on Terok Nor, still on exile, the universe was at war with the Dominion and they were likely to lose, but Dr Claire was dead--and he had his Bashir waiting for him back on the station. 

He hadn't been in the room eight months ago when Bashir finally woke up. The man picked the oh-so-convenient time of 3:34 in the morning while Garak was asleep. Between Dr Kelleter's good hands and the sheer amount of time he spent unconscious in recovery, Garak found out Bashir was awake he found Bashir was standing (standing!) with his arms folded, up against the door frame when Garak came out from the back of the tailoring shop!

"Just a tailor?!" Bashir said. "Just a plain, ordinary tailor?"

He half ran, half walked the ten steps to him and threw his arms around him, clinging to him, child-like with his gratitude. "If you're just a plain, ordinary tailor, I wouldn't be here telling you about it!"

Garak held onto him, feeling his chest press against his, feeling responsible for every breath. When Bashir finally let go--with Garak happy to let him hold on forever--the Cardassian wrapped his hands around Bashir's shoulders and looked him over. 

The stress lines were still there, crackled around his mouth and eyes, with tiny white fractal lines still visible on the edges of his hairline where Dr Kelleter either didn't bother or didn't think to clear them up. Bashir seemed to have aged ten years in only a few days. 

And yet he was still childish and oblivious. Would it be manipulative as hell to confess everything right now when Bashir felt like he owed him so much? 

He passed the back of his still scarred gray hand along the edge of the man's brown face. 

"All in a day's work, doctor. Mending clothes, mending..." What was he supposed to say here? Friends? This went far beyond friends. He felt the edge of the man's feathery hair against his fingertips, then turned away and folded a pair of pants. "I suppose now would be a horribly awkward moment to mention I've been madly in love with you since the day I met you," he said as nonchalantly as possible.

"WHAT!?" 

Garak glanced over at Bashir out of the corner of his eye, reading him over. The man stood there blinking like he'd been hit by a hammer. 

"Well, uh--" Bashir started to say,

Garak leaned forward and held up a finger. "If you say 'that's your prerogative' when I'm doing my very best to be completely honest with you at a most unexpected moment--" there wasn't a good way to end that sentence. 

Judging from his facial expression, that was exactly what he'd been about to say, and now he searched wildly for words that didn't come. "But... you're Cardassian!" 

He more flabbergasted than disgusted, looking away, but skirting closer and closer to him till only the curve of the little display table kept them apart. 

"My dear doctor," Garak said. He locked eyes with Bashir and put his hand on top of the other man's hand on the table. "Where would we be if we let petty things like that dictate our life's directions?"

Bashir looked around at everywhere but him, taking a deep breath like there was no limit to the amount of air his lungs could take in, and running his other hand along his head to clear it, and Garak drew on all his Cardassian patience not moving, waiting for the news to settle. 

After what felt like longer than it took to rescue him from Dr Claire, Bashir turned his hand over under Garak's hand to where their fingers were now threaded between each other. 

"What now?" Bashir said. 

Garak leaned forward and held Bashir's shoulder with the other hand. The room had never seemed larger. "We're on a space station on the edge of the civilized universe, you have your duties, I have this dreadful little shop--" he pulled him closer in, to where they were only inches away, "What do you -want- to have happen now?" he said, happy for the first time in a long time.


End file.
